Julia Hagen

Naturalness and warmth, vitality, and the courage to take risks: These qualities are often used to describe Julia Hagen’s playing. The young cellist from Salzburg is just as convincing as a soloist with orchestra as she is in recital or in numerous chamber music constellations alongside prominent partners. The 29-year-old, who now lives in Vienna, combines technical mastery with high artistic standards and a direct, communicative approach to musicmaking.

Julia Hagen is the winner of the “UBS Young Artist Award” 2024, which includes a concert with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Christian Thielemann at the Lucerne Festival.

Highlights of the 2024/25 season include concerts with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Prague Radio Symphony Orchestra, Chamber Orchestra of the Bayerischer Rundfunk, and the Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona. Of particular note is her US debut with the Cleveland Orchestra under Franz Welser-Möst. In Dortmund, Julia Hagen is one of the "Junge Wilden", young up-and-coming soloists who demonstrate their versatility over three seasons - as a soloist, chamber musician and with orchestra.

She also returns to the Mozarteumorchester Salzburg, the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France under Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla with a concert at the Vienna Musikverein.

Among her many chamber music activities, her trio concert with Igor Levit and Renaud Capuçon in the Berlin Philharmonie and her chamber music tour through Germany and Italy with a Schönberg-Brahms program are particularly worth mentioning. She continues to perform with Anneleen Lenaerts and Lukas Sternath.

Julia Hagen began playing the cello at the age of five. Her training with Enrico Bronzi in Salzburg and Reinhard Latzko in Vienna was followed by formative years in Heinrich Schiff’s Viennese class from 2013 to 2015, and finally by studies with Jens Peter Maintz at the University of the Arts in Berlin. As a Kronberg Academy scholarship holder, Hagen also studied with Wolfgang Emanuel Schmidt until 2022. She was a prize winner of the Liezen International Cello Competition and the Mazzacurati Cello Competition and was awarded the Hajek-Boss-Wagner Culture Prize and the Nicolas Firmenich Prize of the Verbier Festival Academy as the best young cellist, among other prizes.

In 2019, she released her first album together with Annika Treutler with the two cello sonatas by Johannes Brahms on Hänssler Classic. Further recordings are in preparation. Julia Hagen plays an instrument by Francesco Ruggieri (Cremona, 1684), which is privately on loan to her.